More and more surgical procedures are being performed using electrically-powered surgical devices that are either hand-held or that are coupled to a surgical robotic system. Such devices generally include one or more motors for driving various functions on the device, such as shaft rotation, articulation of an end effector, scissor or jaw opening and closing, firing or clips, staples, cutting elements, and/or energy, etc.
A common concern with electrically-powered surgical devices is the lack of control and tactile feedback that is inherent to a manually-operated device. Surgeons and other users accustomed to manually-operated devices often find that electrically-powered devices reduce their situational awareness because of the lack of feedback from the device. For example, electrically-powered devices do not provide users with any feedback regarding the progress of a cutting and/or sealing operation (e.g., an actuation button or switch is typically binary and provides no feedback on how much tissue has been cut, etc.) or the forces being encountered (e.g., toughness of the tissue). This lack of feedback can produce undesirable conditions. For example, if a motor's power is not adequate to perform the function being actuated, the motor can stall out. Without any feedback to a user, the user may maintain power during a stall, potentially resulting in damage to the device and/or the patient. Furthermore, even if the stall is discovered, users often cannot correct the stall by reversing the motor because a greater amount of force is available to actuate than may be available to reverse it (e.g., due to inertia when advancing). As a result, time-intensive extra operations can be required to disengage the device from the tissue.
In addition, electrically-powered devices can be less precise in operation than manually-operated devices. For example, users of manually-operated devices are able to instantly stop the progress of a mechanism by simply releasing the actuation mechanism. With an electrically-powered device, however, releasing an actuation button or switch may not result in instantaneous halting of a mechanism, as the electric motor may continue to drive the mechanism until the kinetic energy of its moving components is dissipated. As a result, a mechanism may continue to advance for some amount of time even after a user releases an actuation button.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved devices and methods that address current issues with electrically-powered surgical devices.